The key to the future of e-books, pointed out Vallik at Digital Book 2008, is connecting readers to the format for the first time.
“Introduce the consumer to digital formats,” Vallik suggests. Once they consume a book digitally, they’re often hooked. So her team has placed extra emphasis on luring first-time users to digital products with free content. For example, Harlequin released the “12 Downloads of Christmas,” making available 12 e-book titles over the course of 12 days—for free. The results, reported Vallik, included new membership to eHarlequin.com doubling, and January sales being “strong.”
Laura Dawson is CEO of Numerical Gurus, LLC, consulting company providing services to the information, librarym and book industries. Dawson has consulted to numerous organizations in these verticals, primarily focusing on solving problems related to metadata, identifiers, Linked Data, semantic web applications, and structured content.